'Best Years' begins tale of college angst

Friday

Jun 29, 2007 at 12:05 AM

The writing and production team behind "Degrassi" present "The Best Years" (8:30 p.m., The N), a 13-episode series about the freshman year of college. Charity Shea stars as Samantha, an orphaned teen on a full-ride scholarship who sees college as a chance to start over. Of course, first she has to navigate a new social scene and learn to distinguish her friends from her "frenemies."

Kevin McDonough

The writing and production team behind "Degrassi" present "The Best Years" (8:30 p.m., The N), a 13-episode series about the freshman year of college. Charity Shea stars as Samantha, an orphaned teen on a full-ride scholarship who sees college as a chance to start over. Of course, first she has to navigate a new social scene and learn to distinguish her friends from her "frenemies."

Since she's poor and without connections, it's only natural that her roommate, Kathryn (Jennifer Miller), hails from one of the wealthiest families in the Midwest. And then there's Dawn (Athena Karkanis), a former child actress who hopes that college will be normal compared to the rigors of Hollywood. Samantha soon catches the eye of Devon (Brandon Jay McLaren), a basketball star and fellow scholarship student.

"Best" follows an episode of "Degrassi: The Next Generation" (8 p.m., The N). The Canadian-produced "Degrassi" series has found a faithful teen audience by sticking to serious teen issues and dealing with characters that are neither ludicrously beautiful nor ridiculously rich.

ION, the network formerly known as Pax, will devote Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings to vintage TV movies and miniseries. Their weekend kicks off with the 1987 made-for-TV potboiler "Broken Vows" (7 p.m., ION), starring Tommy Lee Jones as a priest and Annette O'Toole as the girlfriend of an art-world murder victim. On Saturday, ION will air "Lonesome Dove" (9 p.m., ION), one of the most acclaimed TV miniseries of all time. On Sunday, look for "Cleopatra" (7 p.m., ION), the steamy 1999 miniseries starring Billy Zane, Timothy Dalton and Rupert Graves.

Designers, fashion writers and critics recall the styles sported by the late Princess Diana on "Diana's Dresses" (8 p.m., WE), the first of many nostalgic tributes to the princess who died in 1997.